


In the Aftermath

by Mathais



Series: Into the Moonlight [2]
Category: Clamp Gakuen Tanteidan | Clamp School Detectives
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-15
Updated: 2007-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mathais/pseuds/Mathais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suoh takes care of Akira in the aftermath of his battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The characters of CLAMP Campus Detectives do not belong to me. They belong to CLAMP and whoever else owns their rights.
> 
> Notes: Based off of [Plot Bunny 21 of the CLAMP Campus Detectives pages](http://cheysuli.envy.nu/ccd2.htm) in the [Yaoi Bunny Farm](http://cheysuli.envy.nu/index2.html) run by Cheysuli Night. Plot Bunny is at the end of the story.

Suoh was worried.

He'd had an intensely bad feeling ever since his eyes had snapped open in the morning.  Being the trained ninja he was, he did not ignore his feelings.  When he put on his uniform, his mind was already devising methods to add even more weaponry to his form than usual.

His kunai pouches—the two of them almost always attached—usually held five each.

Today, they held fifteen.

He managed to find more pouches to add senbon, the deadly needles being thin enough for him to hold twenty-five without effort, and shuriken, the throwing stars being large enough for him to carry only seven, but he was proficient to the extent that they were all that mattered.

Two more pouches held a multitude of caltrops and smoke bombs.

When it was time for breakfast, he was debating whether or not to wear the uniform's coat despite the Campus's climate-controlled surroundings, as it allowed him to carry his katana unseen.  Regretfully, he decided to push it away and instead bound a wickedly curved hunting knife (non-standard fare for his job, but Suoh figured that any surprise was to his advantage) to his ankle, using leg-binding to hide it.  The opposite side's wrist held several meters of coiled ninja wire.

His mother only arched a brow at the increased weaponry on his person but did not comment.

She'd be a hypocrite otherwise, having carried just as much weaponry—along with several poisons and antidotes—whenever she had had similar feelings in her youth.

Suoh's danger senses were on high alert throughout the entire day, though no matter how many patrols he skipped classes for, how times he went over the security feeds which monitored most of the campus, he found nothing.

The only thing he found different was Akira.  It wasn't anything that the other boy did or said...

But Suoh had always been hyperaware of the younger boy.  He'd always been there when Akira needed him, unspoken, yes, but there.  And the way Akira had moved the entire day...  It felt almost like a goodbye.

And he'd disappeared right after school ended, leaving a note to excuse him from his council duties.  Suoh tried to contact his parents, but the voice that answered was calm and composed, explaining how Akira was out visiting an uncle in Kyoto.  A quick background search revealed a Keitaro Ijyuin living in Kyoto, so it wasn't too far-fetched...

But there rung a tone of hollowness in the explanation.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do, so he resorted to sitting on his windowsill, looking out at the moonlit sky.  Frustration burned beneath his skin, but he couldn't let it out.  He wanted to know what was going on, but no answers were forthcoming.

So he let the moon calm him, its dominion in the sky lulling him to peace.

When the phone rang, he started, snapping it up as quickly as he could.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Takamura-sempai?" asked a breathless, quiet voice.

"Ijyuin?" Suoh scrambled to his feet, his heart thudding in his chest. "What's wrong?"

"Can you come get me?" the voice asked again, softly, quietly. "I...  I don't think I can move."

"Where are you?" Suoh barely refrained from screaming into the phone.

"...I'm in the park.  That one, the one with the sakura trees, near your house."

Suoh didn't even stop to think.  Tossing the phone onto his bed, he leapt out of his window, jumping from tree branch to tree branch until he had safely cleared the trap-ridden courtyard.  He went with a full on sprint, not even tiring as he raced toward the only park in the vicinity with cherry blossom trees.

The sight he came upon made him pause before he screamed, "Akira!" and forgot to use his dear friend's surname.

Akira leaned against the largest of the cherry blossom trees, in bloom despite not being the season.  He was clothed in white garments which Suoh could tell had once been amazingly beautiful, but they were now tattered, torn, and dirt-streaked to point where they lost their beauty.  Clutched in his right hand was the hilt of a shattered blade, his left lazily applying pressure to his side, with a cell phone discarded nearby.  Akira was a mess of bruises and cuts, gouges and scrapes, all stained with blood.  Long bangs of black covered his eyes as Akira tilted forward.

When Suoh sped over and cradled the weak form in his arms, Akira looked up with one shining steel eye.  He barely beat down the gasp at the left eye, now a milky white.

"What happened to you?" he asked desperately, concern briefly overriding his rage.

"Not now," Akira whispered, a soft yet pained smile stretching over his face. "I...  I only want to rest.  Can you take me home?" He looked fretfully down at his legs, one of which Suoh now realized hung at an odd angle, the other slashed at the ankle. "I don't think I can walk."

"I'm taking you home," he hissed.  Trailing his fingers down Akira's ribs—revealing a far more muscled body than he'd initially assumed from the sweet boy, though he'd begun to suspect considering the fighting prowess he displayed—he grimaced as he realized that there were several cracked ribs and a few which might have been broken.  He'd have to teleport then.  Unfortunately, the teleportation technique was hard to pull off within the confines of CLAMP Campus, as the structure emitted a natural energy which meant it was hard to move through—and there was the fact that the Takamura family only taught the techniques starting at the age of thirteen.  Suoh himself technically shouldn't have known it, but he'd always been a fast learner.

"Teleportation Technique," he whispered, pooling his energy around him.  In a flash, he was back inside the main compound, and he called out three passphrases in succession to the disable the traps and one final one to signal that there was no need to set up a perimeter.

His parents along with several other family members ran out of their rooms, weapons drawn.  At Suoh's insistence, only his parents and the best medic among them stayed.

"Can you take care of him?" Suoh asked quietly, a rare note of pleading in his voice. "I think he has some broken ribs."

The older Takamura quickly assessed the injuries, and there was a frown in his tone when he spoke again. "He really should be taken to a hospital... but I'll do my best."

"Takamura-sempai?" Akira gazed at him listlessly, seemingly only semi-coherent. "Don't leave me, please?"

Sharing only a brief glance with his parents, he knelt by Akira's side and answered, "I won't leave you."

And he meant it.

**OoOoO**

Seated in front of his mother—the Takamura clan head—Suoh carefully explained what happened during the day and the sight he'd found after the phone call.  Once he was done, he looked at his mother, who seemed to be in deep contemplation.  Keeping the traditional seiza position, he closed his eyes and tried not to think about Akira's current state and how it pained him to see his friend so.  The only reason he left was because the other boy had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion and no small dosage of drugs.

"You know," his mother spoke, and his head shot up to listen, "a long time ago, while I was still young, I knew two boys around my age.  Their names were Keitaro and Keiichi, both of the Ijyuin line." Suoh's ears perked at the surname. "Both boys were close; they were always playing together, laughing and joking, so in sync you wouldn't have believed that Keitaro was a cousin who was a year younger than Keiichi—you'd have thought they were twins." A small smile made its way across his mother's usually impassive face. "There were both so kind-hearted...  They cared very deeply about the people around them, though I always noticed that Keiichi was careful to not become too attached.  I became friends with them when both I and Keitaro were six, and Keiichi was seven." The smile grew fonder still. "We played together—and trained together.  Both boys were extremely proficient in martial arts, despite their age, and I was already in training by then, so we were an even match." Eyelids lowered over eyes usually so composed, and Suoh noted maybe a little bit of tears peeking. "Keiichi was always better though.  He was strong, so strong that he always won sparring matches, whether it was against me, Keitaro, or someone quadruple his age.  He always had a core of strength..." there was no mistaking the tears which now caused his mother's voice to waver. "I was so young then, and I fell in love a couple years into our friendship, even though I was a child."

Suoh sucked in a hard breath.  His mother had always refused to talk about her childhood, always saying it was a lot of training.  Now he was privy to some of her most intimate experiences, and he found himself hanging onto every word.

"I'd sworn a year after we met that I'd protect him with my honor as a kunoichi—if I had been any older, he may have become your father." The admission was one that Suoh was not expecting, and the shock was reflected in his eyes. "One day, Keiichi came to me and confessed that he liked me.  I was young and confused—though I also liked him, I thought I was bound by my position as future clan head, so I rejected his advances.  Keiichi only smiled at me and told me he was sorry before walking away." She laughed hollowly, a teardrop falling from her eye. "The look in his eyes...  He was heartbroken.  Keitaro found me two days later.  He was so angry at me for rejecting Keiichi.  He shouted that Keiichi just wanted someone to comfort him, didn't I understand?" Suoh's heart constricted at another laugh, this one bitter and self-deprecating. "I told him I didn't, and Keitaro ran away.  And a week later, Keiichi was dead."

She smiled again at him, her mouth twisting into a sorrowful parody of the expression of happiness. "I managed to drag the story out of Keitaro years later.  Keiichi had died sealing away a great being, and he'd known that he'd die doing so.  It was the job of every firstborn Ijyuin to do so before their eleventh birthday.  Keiichi just wanted a measure of comfort before he went."

It was now that the tears flowed from her face, and Suoh was startled to realize that his eyes mirrored hers. "I never forgave myself for not protecting him.  I always thought that if I'd helped him, maybe he wouldn't have died.  I've had so many regrets...  Maybe if I'd just said yes, Keiichi, with someone to come home to, could have survived." And then his mother stared at him in the eyes. "My biggest regret in my life is not confessing my feelings to him.  Suoh, do not make the same mistake I did.  You're lucky that your Ijyuin came back—I was not.  Do not waste this chance.  Do not have the same regrets as I have."

He hugged his mother for all he was worth, and she hugged him back.

And their mutual tears soothed each other in their silence.

**OoOoO**

"Takamura-sempai?" the voice startled him out of sleep, and instantly his eyes went up.  Akira was sitting up, his wounds cleaned and bound, and dressed in a light hospital gown.  The remains of his sword had been reverently placed on a pillow next to him; the Takamura were an old clan who had respect for weapons as aged and battle-worn as it.  The hilt now was again in his hands, and Akira's fingers traced lightly over what blade still remained.  The Ijyuin continued to look out of the window at the shining moon.

"Yes, Ijyuin?" he asked.

For a moment, the boy seemed to hesitate before he half-turned back to him.  Suoh was startled to realize that the milky-white eye, which he had initially assumed was blinded, was actually trained on him and still fully functional.  A small smile spread across the usually cheerful boy's face. "Thank you.  I probably wouldn't have survived the night without you."

"Ijyuin..." Suoh caught himself as his mother's words echoed inside his head. "Akira," he went forward determinedly, ignoring the surprise on the other's face, "I'm so glad you're safe." He managed to summon a weak yet honest smile for him. "I don't know what I would have done if... if you'd died."

Long lashes fluttered over luminous orbs.  Akira's face was suddenly warm and open as his left hand delicately reached out to grasp Suoh's. "The only reason I'm back is because of you, of you and Utako and Nokoru." Careful not to aggravate his wounds, the Ijyuin completely turned his head, and Suoh saw the tears in his eyes more clearly. "You all were why I came back."

"I know," Suoh whispered, his eyes shining with his own tears. "My mother...  She knew Ijyuin Keiichi—she _loved_ him."

There was a spark of surprise in Akira's eyes before they were flooded with grief. "Every first-born of the Ijyuin line expects to die.  Most never learn to live, and they have no attachments when they die.  Keiichi was going to try, but..." He shook his head. "His last diary entry was stained with tears.  He didn't have the strength to make it back." Akira's fingers began entwining themselves with Suoh's as he spoke, and his eyes looked... aged and haunted. "Suoh, I want you to know—"

"—I know," Suoh cut him off, staring deeply into the mismatched eyes. "I know."

And there was no more to be said as their lips meshed into their first kiss.

**OoOoO**

Before they left the next day—with Akira being supported by Suoh's strength—Akira paused in front of Suoh's mother, hesitation clear in his eyes.  Clutching the remains of the Ijyuin blade to his chest, he bowed low to the Takamura clan head in spite of his injuries.  When he straightened, there was a distinct sadness in his eyes.

"I'm not sure if I should tell you this," he whispered quietly, "but Keiichi—his last thoughts were how much he loved you." Walking toward her, he grasped her hand and placed it on his chest. "He still lives on here, where his memories now rest.  He still lives on in Keitaro, who loved him so much.  And he still lives on here," Akira moved her hand to her head and then laid it on her own chest, "and here, in you, who loved him so much that you continue to mourn to this day, and whom he loved so much that all he could think of was that you were safe from harm."

The tears fell unabashedly now, and, in a rare display of emotion, she wrapped Akira in her embrace, though mindful of his injuries. "Thank you for the gift you've given me," she whispered lowly in a tone not meant for other ears, "and the gift you'll give to my Suoh.  Make him strong—because love is the only thing which will let him survive when everything else, even the clan, disappears."

"I know," he answered quietly.  There was a small smile on his face.

"I know you do," she replied before releasing him.

She watched over the two boys as they limped toward the Ijyuin's home on the Campus, and the immeasurable weight on her heart suddenly lessened.

"Keiichi?" she whispered into the sky. "I love you so much.  Watch over them, all right?"

Though she felt no reply, she immediately felt more at peace.

**OoOoO**

When Akira made it back to his home, Suoh was half-amused that the first reaction to his appearance was to have ofuda launched at him.  In their lack of effect, he was immediately swarmed by two very beautiful women, crying and hugging him as tight as they could.  Suoh stepped back as Akira was helped inside, and he turned to leave when one of the women turned and said, "Please, come in."

Suoh noticed that the extravagant home looked like it was in the middle of a move.  Many things, from precious artifacts to the smallest wall decoration, were in the process of being squirreled away into boxes.  The house looked bare and almost lifeless, but Suoh noted that it was in no way defenseless.  Within reach at nearly every conceivable place were various implements which could double as weapons in some form or another—obvious that they would be the last to be packed away.

The Ijyuin were as battle-ready as the Takamura, though much more subtle.

Before his parents could fuss over him more, Suoh spoke up. "Akira needs a lot more bed rest.  He almost didn't last through the night.  His leg's been set, and he really shouldn't be walking.  We wanted to defer to you for medical treatment."

"We thank you for that," one woman bowed low, and Suoh returned to it.  She then turned to her twin and said, "Call Keitaro."

"I understand.  Come this way, Akira." As the second led Akira away, the first brought Suoh to their sitting room.  But she didn't sit as Suoh sat on the couch.

Suoh immediately stood and tried to stop what was about to occur, but he was too late to prevent the kowtows the woman performed.

"The Ijyuin owe the Takamura a great debt," she whispered quietly. "The return of our first heir is a gift greater than any we could have been given."

"No debt," Suoh returned as he held a hand out. "I did it because I wanted to.  Akira... means a lot to me."

The mother stared at the proffered hand before she accepted it.  Now across the table from him, she bowed her head and said, "My name is Fuuko Ijyuin, and my sister's name is Raiko Ijyuin.  We... take care of Akira as best we can.  Our husband has his duties to the Ijyuin family." Fuuko stared at her hands, and she slowly rung them. "It always hurt to see how much Akira withdrew his true self from others, simply because he didn't want to hurt others when he died.  We tried so hard to make him live, but we've always failed.  We wanted him to come back because he was our son...  But he never had the same desire to live as any other person we've met."

"Being told you're the sacrifice has that effect on people," Suoh whispered quietly, no reprimand in his voice.

"Of course." Fuuko summoned a weak smile. "But he's alive now and...  We have you to thank..." Tears welled in her eyes once more. "Oh, how glorious this day is.  We hadn't known the outcome of the battle, and when we saw Akira all we could think of was that the Deus Albus had won.  But he's here and alive and..." She burst into tears, covering his face with her hands.

Suoh rested a hand on her shoulder as she cried.

**OoOoO**

When all was said and done, Suoh entered the room where Akira lay.  He'd been properly bound this time, and Keitaro had come to enact some healing and purification magics on him, which Suoh watched in rapt attention.  Now that the entire house lay silent, Suoh could sit by Akira's bed and simply take in his friend and now partner.

His fingers trailed over skin tanned from long hours in the sun, scarred as only a warrior could have.  He traced over the muscles of a fighter, tightly coiled without the bulkiness of muscles brought by gyms.  His fingertips dipped into the creases and grooves, skittering around damaged areas but appreciating the entirety of who Akira was.

His fingers tangled into the wave black hair, still stained and flecked with blood.  He traveled over the planes of the face, where the baby fat of youth clashed with the slight scarring around his left eye.

He caressed a soft cheek, feeling the warmth beneath.

Suoh leaned over and kissed Akira's nose.  He then drew into himself and collapsed next to him, allowing himself to cry for the first time.

Because Akira was alive.

Because Akira was warm.

And he stayed that way until Akira's hand, even in his sleep, found his, and they were joined.

Together.

Come what may, they'd be together in the aftermath of one of the biggest changes of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Plot Bunny: Akira calls one of his friends in the middle of the night, asking for help.


End file.
